Advancement of internet and computer networks has made computer networks ubiquitous in the current world. Almost every home or office is equipped with a private network. In addition, business entities such as a large corporation, manufacturing plant, or warehouses operate a variety of systems within their internal network. For the purposes of this disclosure, a network may be defined as a computer network enabling communication between different systems using a common message format, where each of the systems within the same network can transmit and receive messages without converting or translating them. These internal networks connect and enable communication among the different systems that are owned and operated by the same entity. New internal systems or external (i.e., a group of systems connected by an independent network with a different communication format) systems can be added or connected to the internal network, but such process requires a manual configuration of different network parameters.
Interfacing two different systems typically involves using a specific API such as one of a Representational State Transfer (REST) based API, file transfer API, database-to-database transfer API, or the like. Different APIs, however, may have different syntax and formatting requirements, which must be met in order for the two systems to be able to communicate with each other. Furthermore, different systems may also utilize different communication protocols, and messages from a transmitting system must be converted before a receiving system can interpret the messages.
A problem arises when an entity with a variety of systems that manage different aspects of its operation must be able to communicate with another entity. In this case, the two entities must agree on a common API and a communication protocol (collectively referred to hereinafter as communication scheme) and modify all of their systems to adopt the agreed communication scheme. An alternative is to put in place a converting mechanism between each pair of systems, one from each entity, that must communicate with each other. Both methods, however, are costly, both in terms of the cost of implementation and the cost of operation. The problem becomes even more complex when one of the entities must also communicate with yet another entity that uses a different communication scheme because the third entity must also either adopt the same scheme or implement a converting mechanism for each system.
As such, there is a need for centralized solution that interfaces a group of systems of one entity (i.e., internal systems) with groups of systems of multiple different entities (i.e., different external systems) regardless of their respective communication scheme.